[aspectj-users] Mac/Linux LTW mismatch and Autowiring advised classes

[Wendel Schultz <wendel.schultz@xxxxxxxxx>]

If this isn't the appropriate forum, feel free to direct me where I should go.

I have an aspect which measures metrics for annotated classes and methods of a Spring project.  I am looking to measure public @Controller @RequestMapping methods, public @Repository methods and public methods on one of our annotations specifically created to capture measurements.  This is a pretty obvious aspectj use.

I have done a lot of flailing so please be gentle.

I do this as a single @Around advice using @Pointcut("within(@com.spring.Repository) && execution(public * *.*(..))")and so on for each annotation's pointcut definition, ultimately used by my @Around("(repositoryClassPublicMethod() || controllerClassRequestMappingMethod() || metricAwareClassPublicMethod()) && !autowiredMethod())").  I throw in not autowired to trim the fat a little bit.

This is an enormous legacy app we need to chop up, but as-is it has thousands of objects in the Spring context when it loads up.

I am able to compile the @Aspect, compile and war up my project to use Spring's TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader, then instrument the JVM to use Spring's instrumentation javaagent pointing to my aop.xml for load-time weaving support.  It comes alive and I want to buy everybody a round of drinks.  Kind of.

I say kind of because this works on my Mac (10.8), then when I apply the patch and try on my buddy's Ubuntu box, I see the classes get woven at startup, but then at runtime the aspect isn't executing.  Again, the same patch applied on my Mac behaves differently.  We deploy to linux, so I'm at a standstill.  

Even if this worked on his Ubuntu box, LTW adds over 2 minutes to startup (even if I don't showWeaveInfo and don't dump the before/after classes).  I need to do better.

So I looked into compile-time weaving to solve both of these issues (not executing my aspect as well as load times).  I configured our application to use aspectj compile weaver, but then I see the following exceptions:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'vendorKeyController.AjcClosure9' defined in URL [jar:file:/export/home/infusionsoft/crm-29-sandbox2/

infusionsoft-dist/target/camp/webapp/WEB-INF/lib/com.infusion.crm-api.jar!/com/infusionsoft/api/authentication/controller/VendorKeyController$AjcClosure9.class]: Instantiation of bean fail

ed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Could not instantiate bean class [com.infusionsoft.api.authentication.controller.VendorKeyController$AjcClosur

e9]: No default constructor found; nested exception is java.lang.NoSuchMethodException: com.infusionsoft.api.authentication.controller.VendorKeyController$AjcClosure9.<init>()

I use the aspectj-maven-plugin (from codehaus, not the maven-aspectj-plugin from apache).

From what I've been able to gather, closures are created when aspectj's compiler can't inline the advice.  OK, that's fine I guess.  This leaves me with a few questions:

• How can I get my LTW to work, even if it is slow (presumably I can use the caching feature to only pay that price once?)
• How can I get compile-time parity with bytecode generated by LTW?
• Is there another way to dodge the issue in bold above having ajc-ed?
• What bad assumptions am I making?
• I want to build a Spring context.  I don't really care how that happens.  Other ideas?

I'm not interested in fighting Spring AOP.  It has its own gotchas and we already use it in some situations which lead to a multiple inheritance problem for some of the classes I'd be looking to aspect.  I'd like to find the end of this path I'm on.

Thanks SO much in advance,

-w